From the little sight
The hidden world that is visualized when looking through the microscope’s myriad, in addition to being beautiful, often has great scientific value. Horixe da Nikon Small World mikroargazkigintza-lehiaketaketaren azken edizioa irabazi zuen argazkiaren kasua. Bram van den Broek and colleagues investigate the dynamics of keratin fibers in skin cells at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. In this study, advanced fluorescence microscopy techniques are used. This is how they photographed a skin cell that produces too much keratin and won the competition with this photo.
Keratin is an important structural protein for skin cells: it protects the cell from mechanical stress and has several other functions, such as migration and adhesion. “Keratin expression patterns are often not normal in skin tumor cells, which is widely used as a tumor marker for diagnosis,” explains Dr. van den Broek. “By studying how the dynamics of proteins like keratin change in cells, we can better understand the development of cancer and other diseases.”
Among the more than 2,000 photographs that have been submitted to the contest, the skin cell has triumphed; in addition, several other photographs have been highlighted in the contest and you have a selection of some of them in the following pages.
Buletina
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